Smith: City Hall was green, but the price was right

May 21, 2014, 11:03PM

05/21/2014

Who among us noticed that for a while there the white lights on the Santa Rosa City Hall sign turned green?

Do you have any idea why that happened? It was because the local American Lung Association chapter helped launch Lung Force, an awareness campaign of the threat lung cancer poses to women. Death rates among women who contract the disease are higher than for breast cancer.

The campaign's color is turquoise, so all sorts of people, businesses and institutions agreed to don turquoise. Gel sleeves placed over the fluorescent lights of the City Hall sign were expected to glow turquoise but instead they were distinctly green.

The good news: the city borrowed the green sleeves at no cost. Who knows what turquoise might have cost?

A bright idea would be to give a woman you love a little something turquoise, accompanied by information on lung cancer. If the little something is green, good enough.

JAPANESE & FUNNY: Arts and culture fare well in Sonoma County, but we don't see a lot of Kyogen.

Of course you know that's Japanese stage comedy that dates to the 14th century.

Organizers of Saturday's Matsuri arts festival in Santa Rosa's Juilliard Park will kick it off on Friday evening with a full-costumed Kyogen performance in the park's Church of One Tree.

See www.sonomamatsuri.com for details. A key one: the three traditional Japanese comedies all are in English.

NICE RIDES: Also happening this weekend is one of the area's sweetest car shows — one that helps to assure that west county seniors can catch a ride to medical appointments and such.

The Driven to Perfection classic car show, hosted by the Sebastopol Area Senior Center, opens at O'Reilly Media at 10 a.m. and concludes with a 4 p.m. cruise through the core of Appletown.

A VET IS STUCK if he or she has a medical appointment but no reasonable way to get to it.

Some local able-bodied veterans, PG&E and the Red Cross are acting to remedy that problem. At the VA Outpatient Clinic in Santa Rosa on Friday, PG&E and some caring vets will donate nearly $12,000 for the purchase of bus and taxi vouchers.

The money allows the expansion of a Red Cross-supervised transportation program begun last fall for low-income vets served by the VA Clinic in Lake County.

Now, Sonoma County vets in need of a ride to a medical appointment can request a bus voucher from Vet Connect, or a bus or taxi voucher from the VA Clinic on Brickway Boulevard.

Who among us noticed that for a while there the white lights on the Santa Rosa City Hall sign turned green?

Do you have any idea why that happened? It was because the local American Lung Association chapter helped launch Lung Force, an awareness campaign of the threat lung cancer poses to women. Death rates among women who contract the disease are higher than for breast cancer.

The campaign's color is turquoise, so all sorts of people, businesses and institutions agreed to don turquoise. Gel sleeves placed over the fluorescent lights of the City Hall sign were expected to glow turquoise but instead they were distinctly green.

The good news: the city borrowed the green sleeves at no cost. Who knows what turquoise might have cost?

A bright idea would be to give a woman you love a little something turquoise, accompanied by information on lung cancer. If the little something is green, good enough.

JAPANESE & FUNNY: Arts and culture fare well in Sonoma County, but we don't see a lot of Kyogen.

Of course you know that's Japanese stage comedy that dates to the 14th century.

Organizers of Saturday's Matsuri arts festival in Santa Rosa's Juilliard Park will kick it off on Friday evening with a full-costumed Kyogen performance in the park's Church of One Tree.

See www.sonomamatsuri.com for details. A key one: the three traditional Japanese comedies all are in English.

NICE RIDES: Also happening this weekend is one of the area's sweetest car shows — one that helps to assure that west county seniors can catch a ride to medical appointments and such.

The Driven to Perfection classic car show, hosted by the Sebastopol Area Senior Center, opens at O'Reilly Media at 10 a.m. and concludes with a 4 p.m. cruise through the core of Appletown.

A VET IS STUCK if he or she has a medical appointment but no reasonable way to get to it.

Some local able-bodied veterans, PG&E and the Red Cross are acting to remedy that problem. At the VA Outpatient Clinic in Santa Rosa on Friday, PG&E and some caring vets will donate nearly $12,000 for the purchase of bus and taxi vouchers.

The money allows the expansion of a Red Cross-supervised transportation program begun last fall for low-income vets served by the VA Clinic in Lake County.

Now, Sonoma County vets in need of a ride to a medical appointment can request a bus voucher from Vet Connect, or a bus or taxi voucher from the VA Clinic on Brickway Boulevard.